Woman’s Belongings Lost When Repo Crew Empties Wrong House

You’d like to think that if someone broke into your home then backed up a truck and carted away all your worldly possessions that they could be found criminally guilty of something. But that’s not the case for Nikki Bailey of Logan, W.V., who came home from visiting a friend in the hospital to find that all of her belongings had been taken in a foreclosure repossession, even though her home had long been paid off.

As described in the video below, the repossession was supposed to have taken place at an address with a similar street name — but in another town. The mistake wasn’t discovered until Bailey caught the repossession crew finishing up at her house, and by that time, they said, the former teacher’s clothes, furniture and keepsakes had already been disposed of at a dump. Bailey’s next step is to seek some kind of civil action against the repossessing company, CTM Industries, or the bank that employed them, as yet unidentified.

Whether viewed as simply a mistake or reckless negligence, the same thing happened to a woman in neighboring Ohio in a widely publicized incident just last month. The foreclosing bank there blamed a faulty GPS and offered restitution for the thousands in losses that the homeowner suffered if, it said, she could provide receipts for the items. In 2012 a home in Twentynine Palms, Calif., also was mistakenly broken into by repo contractors — in that case, twice. The Huffington Post reports court records as showing that at least 50 lawsuits have been filed in recent years alleging similar break-ins.

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